Paper Chains

Well today is the day! At midnight tonight (the second September 6, 2007 ends) I cease to be a Peace Corps Volunteer! For the past three months, leaving Peace Corps and returning home is what I have been looking for. I felt finished with my job here, I wanted it to end. I remember way back in May I had a wonderful idea. Even back then I was dreaming about leaving, and so I made a paper chain. During the advent season of Christmas when I was a kid, we always made paper chains and would tear off a link each night. The chain would get shorter and shorter, indicating the shorter time it was until Christmas arrived. When I first began my paper chain, I had maybe 150 links on it. The chain stretched the entire perimeter of my room, and my host family exclaimed about how pretty my new room decoration was (I did not tell them what it was really for...). Now, I only have one link left.

It is so strange, really. For months I had been looking forward to leaving Buffelshoek and leaving PC. I did enjoy my PC experience, but I was just tired of it. Two years is a long time, and I was ready to go back to the US. But when the time finally came to leave, I was sad. I knew I did not want to stay, but I did not want to leave either. I think I can honestly say that leaving Buffelshoek- my host family, my teachers, the kids I have taught, my fellow PCVs, all the people that I have learned to love in the past two years- was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. For two years, my co workers and host family and my friends in PC were my world. The people I met and interacted with here were my family, and I don't know when or if I will ever see them again. This realization came crashing down on me during my farewell function, pretty much causing me to cry buckets when I said good bye to everyone. I will miss everyone so much.

Despite all of my hardships during Peace Corps- the physical living hardships, the mental hardships and the difficulties I faced at work- I have no regrets. I do not regret neither joining Peace Corps nor accepting the position to work in education in South Africa, because the last two years have been filled with some of the most rewarding experiences in my life. I gained a whole new family while being here, and new friends that I will have forever. Despite all of the things I went through in the past two years, I can say that the hardest thing about Peace Corps was leaving.

So, this is it. I have talked to everyone I need to talk to, have been medically cleared to leave the country (I'm healthier now than when I first arrived!) and my PC ID has been punched, rendering it void. Wow. Who would have thought that it would end? I cannot believe that two years have gone, and this episode of my life is over. But, after this nice sappy post, I am going to end on a positive note! My adventures are not over yet! I am not coming straight back to the United States. Actually, I will not be back in the US until November. Instead, I am packing up my bag and traveling! I am going with my friend Emily, and in the next two months we are hitting Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania. Our goal: see as much as possible in the next two months, climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and be home in time for Thanksgiving! So, stay tuned for more adventures... who know what the next two months will bring?

Changes

My two years in PC is pretty much at an end, and last week as I was getting ready to leave my site I was astounded about how many changes I have witnessed. My time in Buffelshoek varied between going super fast and agonizingly slow, but somehow the 24 months passed and now I am on the way out. I think the physical village changed the least. There are a few more buildings, a few more water towers, a few more animals, a few less trees but largely the village is the same. The road remain as dusty as when I first arrived; cows, chickens and goats still wander around the houses and in the streets; the mosquitoes are still present and will always be there; we are still hauling our water from the nearest water tap a kilometer away. This largely remain the same.

Changes in School? Well, I must admit that there aren't as many as I would have liked. The teachers still use corporal punishment, but maybe a little less than before I started making a big stint about it. There is a library in one of my schools now, a computer in the other, and a photocopy machine at the third. All of my schools now have boreholes, and the children play with the taps and in the water during break now, when two years ago they had to walk as much as a kilometer to get a drink of water. There are new fences to keep the goats and chickens away, more teachers are making lesson plans and long term plans for their classes, and more teachers are using outcomes based education- and actually enjoying it. Some teachers still do not go to class, and some teachers still do not come to school. I know this will continue-somethings do not change no matter how hard you want them to.

The people have changed the most. I still remember when I first met my host sister Lethabo. She was a bubbly 13-year-old with pigtails and a jumper playing jump rope with our neighbors. Now she is 15, still bubbly but more interested in make-up and music than jump rope. Lerato was 17 when I arrived and was your typical teenager who couldn't care less about school and worried more about her social life than her grades. Now she is more serious- she has buckled down in her studies and is busy planning her life for when she graduates high school next year. My youngest host sister, Leago, was 9 when I first arrived and is now 11. She has remained largely the same, maybe a little taller but still the sweet little girl she always was. My "cousins" Thabang and Tsepho, 14 and 15 respectively when I arrived are now much taller and both are sporting (or trying to sport) mustaches-freaky if you ask me. I have seen 4 babies born into my host family in my two years here- Mmpele, Lithle, Koketso and Tuka and they have grown the most noticeably from the teeny babies I held when they were only a few days old. Now all of them are walking and somewhat talking. My host mother is still the same- maybe a little older but still the same woman who greeted me with open arms two years ago.

Then there is me. I know for certain that I have changed. If I met the person who got on the plane in New York City two years ago today, I would not recognize them. In some ways I am still me, but in other ways I know I have changed forever. Unfortunately I am not as optimistic as I once was, but I thought I was patient before but here I learned what REAL patience is. I am more realistic now and not as naive as I once was. I have grown more introspective and less materialistic. I have a strong appreciation for running water and flush toilets, and I realize how much I took for granted in my life in the US. I know what it's like to live in poverty and I know what its like to be a minority now and also I know what racism really is after having witnessed it for the past two years. Honestly, after everything I have seen and done living in South Africa, I do not know how I will adjust to living in the United States. We will have to see, I guess. I have always had a difficult time with change, but after working in the developing world, I have a better appreciation for it. Change is hard, but it is inevitable, and it is necessary for growth...

Staring Contests

One of the more annoying things many of us have dealt with since being here in South Africa is the staring aspect. I grew accustomed- actually rather quickly- of being THE minority in my village. Not only was I the only white girl in the village, but I was the only white girl in about a ten mile radius, and the nearest other white people in the area were other volunteers. I understood quickly why people stare, I'm kind of an oddity. Villagers in Buffelshoek and Okkernootboom were not used to seeing white people wandering around the village, let alone having one live with them for two years. I understood all of this when I arrived two years ago. However, I fully expected the novelty and staring to fade away as people got used to me. Yeah, that didn't happen. Two years of living as a resident of Buffelshoek, and still I was called "lehua" (white person) instead of my name, and people still stared.

People did not just stare- they BLATANTLY stared. In the US as a kid I was always taught that staring was rude, so if I did want to get a closer look at someone, I always tried to do it discreetly. Obviously that's just an American cultural thing, because staring can definitely not be considered rude here. Little kids have stared with mouths open, people have stopped conversations to follow me with their eyes and my personal favorite, people standing by the side of the road actually turn their bodies, not just their heads, to stare at me when I walk by. It is rather disconcerting. Normally I just ignore the staring, but then I literally feel the eyes boring into my back as I walk away, and that just gets me annoyed. My friend Amanda has a different method of dealing with staring: she stares back. She assured me that it is actually very refreshing, but obviously I was raised a little too well, because not only does being stared at make me uncomfortable, but staring at others makes me uncomfortable as well. Just a few weeks ago, I was sitting in a function and I noticed this maybe ten-year-old boy staring at me. After ignoring him for a few minutes and realizing that yes, he was still staring, I got annoyed. I was kind of bored, (functions can last hours with nothing but speeches, normally in languages I do not understand), so I decided to try an experiment. As a kid, I was very good at staring contests with my friends, mainly because I am just too stubborn to quit. I decided to try and out stare this boy. I made my face completely blank (no smiling, I was not going to encourage this type of behavior) and turned my eyes on the boy.

So, he had been staring at me for several minutes without me noticing (he thought) so he seemed a bit surprised when he saw me turn and look at him. We stared at each other. Kept staring. Kept staring. Kept staring. He finally looked away. At that point, I decided to keep staring, just to give him a taste of his own medicine. After a few seconds he turned back and noticed I was still staring. He looked down in his lap, then sneaked a peak back. I stared. He looked back at the speaker for a bit. I stared. He fidgeted his fingers. I propped my chin up with my hand and stared. He snuck another peak. I stared. He squirmed in his seat. I stared. He made a pained expression. I stared. He squirmed harder. I stared. Finally, he turned abruptly in his seat so that his back was too me. He avoided looking at me for the entire rest of the function. Yeah, that's right kid. Being stared at isn't fun, is it? It makes you uncomfortable, doesn't it? Maybe you'll think twice before you stare at someone again, won't you? My work there was done. Hah!